New Insights Into Healthful Compounds In Native American Diets

Science Daily ^ | 10-10-2006

[blam]

New Insights Into Healthful Compounds In Native American Diets

In an advance toward understanding the early California Native American diet, food scientists have identified the full range of phytochemicals in tanoak acorns.

Acorns were a staple in the diet of early Native Americans in California, comprising up to 50 percent of total food intake, Alyson E. Mitchell and colleagues note in a report in the current (Oct. 4) issue of the ACS biweekly Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.

Acorns are still used by Californian Native Americans -- special processing is needed to make the nuts edible -- to make acorn flour and soup.

Past research has indicated that acorns have higher levels of healthful tannin compounds than other nuts, so Mitchell's group set out to identify the specific hydrolyzable and condensed tannins in acorns. These same compounds are found in wine, cocoa and other foods with health benefits.

Researchers identified more than two dozen specific compounds, in what they termed a first step toward understanding the role of those compounds in Native American diets.

[blam]

GGG Ping?

[Enterprise]

Firewater. Burns away hemorrhoids.

[Hilltop]

Firewater, makes acorns and insects edible.

[Billthedrill]

They invented popcorn and chocolate, too. Talk to me about healthy.

(Come to think of it, that means they must have invented microwave ovens. Wonder what they plugged them into? A currant bush?)

[Carl LaFong]

Are these beneficial ingredients in all the casino buffets?

[Enterprise]

LOL

[fso301]

And what was their life expectancy while on such a "healty" diet?

[Enterprise]

Firewater - go to sleep with honey sweet running fawn - wake up with moldy bear dung cloud.

[ZULU]

"In an advance toward understanding the early California Native American diet.."

I kind of like Magwa's diet (Last of the Mohegans)- the heart of your enemy fresh cut from his breast.

[Balding_Eagle]

They invented popcorn and chocolate, too.

Isn't it ironic that they never even invented the wheel?

[Jedi Master Pikachu]

The article could have gone more in depth. And how are the acorns processed? Soaking with water to leech out poisonous stuff? How is acorn flour made? Recipes?

[FlingWingFlyer]

Have you ever eaten any Apache "acorn stew?" You haven't lived OR DIED until you have. LOL!!!!

[gcruse]

LOL

[Jedi Master Pikachu]

They in this case represented people strewn over a continent, if you are going to include chocolate (Mesoamerica), and popcorn (corn's from Mesoamerica, too, but spread over the eastern part of the United States). Also, both did not have the fattening stuff in them. Amerindian chocolate seems disgusting: it had peppers and was a drink. Popcorn probably wasn't buttered and salted either. Neither were in California.

[Jedi Master Pikachu]

They did. They made wheeled toys, but there is currently no evidence of wheels for transport, pottery, or mills. They are the people of Mesoamerica. Acting as though the peoples of the Americas were one culture is absurd as there being a single Eurasian culture.

Back to the wheel, they had no pack animals in the area, and only one--the llama--in the Americas. It would seem that alpacas could also be pack animals, but this is from 1491.

[Jedi Master Pikachu]

What is the substance, in modern terms?

[Billthedrill]

I'm inclined to believe they invented motion pictures as well. What else would you do with chocolate and popcorn?

Seriously, I do happen to know a little about acorn flour - in old Japan they used to steep them in ponds dug for that purpose. I don't know if the modern Japanese do it the same way but when I lived there my neighbors used to make these weird little unleavened cakes out of the flour, more of a curiosity than actual nutrition. My old landlady told me they'd gather them during WWII to stretch the rice rations. Amazing what you can do if you have to.

[Jedi Master Pikachu]

Much appreciated. So, is soaking the method to make acorns edible?

[Jedi Master Pikachu]

About the pack animals: without them, there is not as much incentive to make wheels for transport (probably the first application, and there would probably still be some incentive, but not as much).